ple, and the adoption of every frivolity and of every vice that can excite hatred combined with ridicule, all, all this, and more, may be seen around us; and yet it is believed, it is expected, that this system is fated to be eternal. Gentlemen, we shall all weep the insane delusion; and, in the terrific moments of retaliation, you know not, you cannot know, how soon or how bitterly "the ingredients of your poisoned chalice may be commended to your own lips. » Is there amongst you any one friend to freedom? Is there amongst you one man who esteems equal and impartial justice-who values the people's rights as the foundation of private happiness, and who considers life as no boon without liberty? Is there amongst you one friend to the constitution-one man who hates oppression? If there be, Mr. Magee appeals to his kindred mind, and expects an acquittal. Otis, James (American, 1725-1783.) For Liberty at Any Cost-Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. These sentiments, in private life, make the good citizen; in public life, the patriot and the hero. I do not say that when brought to the test I shall be invincible. I pray God I may never be brought to the melancholy trial; but if ever I should, it will be then known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth. In the meantime I will proceed to the subject of this writ. -(On Writs of Assistance. Boston, February, 1761.) Palmer, Benjamin W. (American, Contemporaneous.) Lee and Washington - What is that combination of influences, partly physical, partly intellectual, but somewhat more moral, which should make a particular country productive of men great over all others on earth, and to all ages of time? Ancient Greece, with her indented coast, inviting to maritime adventures, from her earliest period was the mother of heroes in war, of poets in song, of sculptors and artists, and stands up after the lapse of centuries the educator of mankind, living in the grandeur of her works and in the immortal productions of minds which modern civilization, with all its cultivation and refinement and science, never surpassed and scarcely equaled. And why, in the three hundred years of American history, it should be given to the Old Dominion to be the grandmother, not only of States, but of the men by whom states and empires are formed, it might be curious, were it possible for us to inquire. Unquestionably, Mr. President, there is in this problem the element of race; for he is blind to all the truths of history, to all the revelations of the past, who does not recognize a select race as we recognize a select individual of a race, to make all history. But pretermitting all speculation of that sort, when Virginia unfolds the scroll of her immortal sons, not because illustrious men did not precede him gathering in constellations and clusters, but because the name shines out through those constellations and clusters in all its peerless grandeur, -we read first the name of George Washington. And then, Mr. President, after the interval of three-quarters of a century, when your jealous eye has ranged down the record and traced the names that history will never let die, you come to the name - the only name in all the annals of history that can be named in the perilous connection-of Robert E. Lee, the second Washington. Well may old Virginia be proud of her twin sons, born almost a century apart, but shining like those binary stars which open their glory and shed their splendor on the darkness of the world. (From an address delivered at a meeting of the citizens of New Orleans, October 15th, 1870, the funeral day of General Robert E. Lee.) Parker, Theodore (American, 1810-1860.) "A Man of the Largest Mold" - He was a great man, a man of the largest mold, a great body, and a great brain; he seemed made to last a hundred years. Since Socrates, there has seldom been a head so massive, so huge,— seldom such a face since the stormy features of Michael Angelo : The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome-' he who sculptured Day and Night into such beautiful forms, he looked them in his face before he chiseled them into stone. Dupuytren and Cuvier are said to be the only men in our day that have had a brain so vast. Since Charlemagne I think there has not been such a grand figure in all Christendom. A large man, decorous in dress, dignified in deportment, he walked as if he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who knew him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets. The coal-heavers and porters of London looked on him as one of the great forces of the globe; they recognized a native king. In the Senate of the United States he looked an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar, and Van Buren but a fox. What a mouth he had! It was a lion's mouth. Yet there was a sweet grandeur in his smile, and a woman's sweetness when he would. What a brow it was! What eyes! like charcoal fire in the bottom of a deep, dark well. His face was rugged with volcanic fires, great passions and great thoughts : The front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. » Divide the faculties, not bodily, into intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious; and Parker, Theodore - Continued try him on that scale. His late life shows that he had little religion, somewhat of its lower forms, conventional devoutness, formality of prayer, "the ordinances of religion"; but he had not a great man's all-conquering look to God. It is easy to be "devout. » The Pharisee was more so than the Publican. It is hard to be moral. - ( On the death of Webster, 1852.) Government of, by, and for the People — The American idea, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.- (Boston, 1850.) How Empires End - Do you know how empires find their end? Yes, the great states eat up the little. As with fish, so with nations. Aye, but how do the great states come to an end? By their own injustice. Parnell, Charles Stewart (Ireland, 1846-1891.) Why Land is Scarce in Ireland - We are asked: "Why do you not recommend emigration to America ?" and we are told that the lands of Ireland are too crowded. The lands of Ireland are not too crowded; they are less thickly populated than those of any civilized country in the world; they are far less thickly populated, the rich lands of Ireland,-than any of your western States. It is only on the barren hillsides of Connemara and along the west Atlantic coast that we have too thick a population, and it is only on the unfertile lands that our people are allowed to live. They are not allowed to occupy and till the rich lands; these rich lands are retained as preserves for landlords, and as vast grazing tracts for cattle. — (St. Louis, 1880.) Peel, Sir Robert (England, 1788–1850.) The Steam Engine and the Mind-The steam engine and the railroad are not merely facilitating the transport of merchandise, they are not merely shortening the duration of journeys, or administering to the supply of physical wants. They are speeding the intercourse between mind and mind; they are creating new demands for knowledge; they are fertilizing the intellectual as well as the material waste; they are removing the impediments which obscurity, or remoteness, or poverty, may have heretofore opposed to the emerging of real merit. – (From his Glasgow Address.) Pendleton, Edmund (American, 1721-1803.) Government as a Defense of FreedomOn the subject of government, the worthy member [Mr. Henry] and I differ at the threshold. I think government necessary to protect liberty. He supposes the American spirit all-sufficient for the purpose. What say the most respectable writers, Montesquieu, Locke, Sidney, Harrington, etc.? They have presented us with no such idea. They properly discard from their system all the severity of cruel punishment, such as tortures, inquisitions, and the like, shocking to human nature, and only calculated to coerce the dominion of tyrants over slaves. But they recommend making the ligaments of governments firm, and a rigid execution of the laws as more necessary than in a monarchy to preserve that virtue which they all declare to be the pillar on which the government, and liberty, its object, must stand. They are not so visionary as to suppose there ever did, or ever will, exist a society, however large their aggregate fund of virtue may be, but hath among them persons of a turbulent nature, restless in themselves and disturbing the peace of others,- sons of rapine and violence, who, unwilling to labor themselves, are watching every opportunity to snatch from the industrious peasant the fruits of his honest labor. Was I not, then, correct in my inference, that such a government and liberty were friends and allies, and that their common enemies were turbulence, faction, and violence.- (Virginia Convention. 1788.) Penn, William (England, 1644-1718.) Magna Charta Defined — That the privileges due to Englishmen, by the Great Charter of England, have their foundation in reason and law; and that those new Cassandrian ways to introduce will and power deserve to be detested by all persons professing sense and honesty, and the least allegiance to our English government, we shall make appear from a sober consideration of the nature of those privileges contained in that charter. 1. The ground of alteration of any law in government (where there is no invasion) should arise from the universal discommodity of its continuance; but there can be no disprofit in the discontinuance of liberty and property; therefore there can be no just ground of alteration. 2. No one Englishman is born slave to another, neither has the one a right to inherit the sweat and benefit of the other's labor, without consent; therefore the liberty and property of an Englishman cannot reasonably be at the will and beck of another, let his quality and rank be never so great. 3. There can be nothing more unreasonable than that which is partial, but to take away the liberty and property of any, which are natural rights, without breaking the law of nature (and not of will and power) is manifestly partial, and therefore unreasonable. 4. If it be just and reasonable for men to do as they would be done by, then no sort of men should invade the liberties and properties of other men, because they would not be served so themselves. 5. Where liberty and property are destroyed, there must always be a state of force and war, which, however pleasing it may be unto the invaders, will be esteemed intolerable by the invaded, who will no longer remain subject, in all human probability, than while they want as much power to free themselves as their adversaries had to enslave them; the troubles, hazards, ill consequences, and illegality of such attempts, as they have declined by the most prudent in all ages, so have they proved most uneasy to the most savage of all nations, who first or last have by a mighty torrent freed themselves, to the due punishment and great infamy of their oppressors; such being the advantage, such the disadvantage, which necessarily do attend the fixation and removal of liberty and property. We shall proceed to make it appear that Magna Charta (as recited by us) imports nothing less than their preservation : "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other ways destroyed; nor we will not pass upon him nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, etc. "A freeman shall not be amerced for a small fault, but after the manner of the fault, and for a great fault after the greatness thereof, and none of the said amercement shall be assessed, but by the oath of good and lawful men of the vicinage." 1. It asserts Englishmen to be free; that's liberty. 2. That they have freeholds; that's property. 3. That amercement or penalties should be proportioned to the faults committed, which is equity. 4. That they shall lose neither, but when they are adjudged to have forfeited them, in the judgment of their honest neighbors, according to the law of the land, which is lawful judgment. It is easy to discern to what pass the enemies of the Great Charter would bring the people. 1. They are now freemen; but they would have them slaves. 2. They have now right unto their wives, children, and estates, as their undoubted property; but such would rob them of all. 3. Now no man is to be amerced or punished but suitably to his fault; whilst they would make it suitable to their revengeful minds. 4. Whereas the power of judgment lies in the breasts and consciences of twelve honest neighbors, they would have it at the discretion of mercenary judges; to which we cannot choose but add that such discourses manifestly strike at this present constitution of government; for it being founded upon the Great Charter, which is the ancient common law of the land, as upon its best foundation, none can design the canceling of the charter, but they must necessarily intend the extirpation of the English government; for where the cause is taken away the effect must consequently cease.- (From his defense when arrested for "tumultuous assembly." 1760.) Pericles (Greece, c. 495-429 B. C.) Democracy at Athens-We are happy in a form of government which cannot envy the laws of our neighbors,- for it hath served as a model to others, but is original at Athens. And this our form, as committed not to the few, but to the whole body of the people, is called a democracy. How different soever in a private capacity, we all enjoy the same general equality our laws are fitted to preserve; and superior honors just as we excel. The public administration is not confined to a particular family, but is attainable only by merit. Poverty is not a hindrance, since whoever is able to serve his country meets with no obstacle to preferment from his first obscurity. The offices of the state we go through without obstructions from one another; and live together in the mutual endearments of private life without suspicions; not angry with a neighbor for following the bent of his own humor, nor putting on that countenance of discontent, which pains though it cannot punish,-so that in private life we converse without diffidence or damage, while we dare not on any account offend against the public, through the reverence we bear to the magistrates and the laws, chiefly to those enacted for redress of the injured, and to those unwritten, a breach of which is thought a disgrace. Our laws have further provided for the mind most frequent intermissions of care by the appointment of public recreations and sacrifices throughout the year, elegantly performed with a peculiar pomp, the daily delight of which is a charm that puts melancholy to flight. The grandeur of this our Athens causeth the produce of the whole earth to be imported here, by which we reap a familiar enjoyment, not more of the delicacies of our own growth than of those of other nations.-(From his Eulogy of the Athenian dead. Thucydides.) Phillips, Charles (Ireland, c. 1787-1859.) Ireland and America-Never, oh, never! while memory remains, can Ireland forget the home of her emigrant and the asylum of her exile. No matter whether their sorrows sprung from the errors of enthusiasm or the realities of suffering; from fancy or infliction, that must be reserved for the scrutiny of those whom the lapse of time shall acquit of partiality. It is for the men of other ages to investigate and record it; but surely it is for the men of every age to hail the hospitality that received the shelterless, and love the feeling that befriended the unfortunate. Search creation round; where can you find a country that presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation? What noble institutions! What a comprehensive policy! What a wise equalization of every political advantage! The oppressed of all countries, the martyrs of every creed, the innocent victim of despotic arrogance or superstitious frenzy, may there find refuge; his industry encouraged, his piety respected, his ambition animated; with no restraint but those laws which are the same to all, and no distinction but that which his merit may originate. Who can deny that the existence of such a country presents a subject for human congratulation? Who can deny that its gigantic advancement offers a field for the most rational conjecture? At the end of the very next century, if she proceeds as she seems to promise, what a wondrous spectacle may she not exhibit! Who shall say for what purpose a mysterious Providence may not have designed her? Who shall say that when in its follies or its crimes the Old World may have interred all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined renovation in the New? -(From his Dinas Island speech on Washington. "World's Best Orations.") Phillips, Wendell (American, 1811-1884.) "A Better Use of Iron»-I think you can make a better use of iron than forging it into chains. If you must have the metal, put it into Sharpe's rifles. It is a great deal better used that way than in fetters,-a great deal better used than in a clumsy statue of a mock great man, for hypocrites to kneel down and worship in a statehouse yard. [Hisses.] I am so unused to hisses lately that I have forgotten what I had to say. I only know I meant what I did say. - (1859.) Blindness In Politics-Some men seem to think that our institutions are necessarily safe because we have free schools and cheap books and a public opinion that controls. But that is no evidence of safety. India and China have had schools, and a school system almost identical with that of Massachusetts, for fifteen hundred years. And books are as cheap in Central and Northern Asia as they are in New York. But they have not secured liberty, nor secured a controlling public opinion to either nation. Spain for three centuries had municipalities and town governments, as independent and selfsupporting, and as representative of thought as New England or New York has. But that did not save Spain. De Tocqueville says that fifty years before the great Revolution, public opinion was as omnipotent in France as it is to-day, but it did not save France. You cannot save men by machinery. What India and France and Spain wanted was live men, and that is what we want to-day; men who are willing to look their own destiny and their own functions and their own responsibilities in the face. "Grant me to see, and Ajax wants no more," was the prayer the great poet put into the lips of his hero in the darkness that overspread the Grecian camp. All we want of American citizens is the opening of their own eyes, and seeing things as they are. - (1859.) Higher Law-We confess that we intend to trample under foot the Constitution of this country. Daniel Webster says: "You are a lawabiding people"; that the glory of New England is "that it is a law-abiding community." Shame on it, if this be true; if even the religion of New England sinks as low as its statute book. But I say we are not a law-abiding community. be thanked for it! (From a speech at a FreeSoil Meeting in Boston, in May, 1849.) God Pierrepont, Edwards (American, 1817-1892.) Equality in America- Equality is the central idea with our people, and I dare say that in this large audience there are many benevolent persons who would make all equally rich; but it would come to about the same to make all equally poor. The rich man would not do the menial work of another rich man, and the rich woman would not wash and cook for the rich man's wife; the poor man will not brush the shoes of another poor man who can give him no pay, and all the social wheels would be ablock. Equality before the laws we can have; equality of condition is impossible.- (From an oration at Yale, June 22d, 1874.) Pike, Albert (American, 1809-1891.) The Moral Influences - There are single passages in the writings of Daniel Webster that will exercise more influence upon the youth of America than all the statutes of this Union. There are songs written by men whose names are now forgotten that are more to the American people than a regiment of bayonets. "Let him who will make the laws of a nation, if I may but make its songs," was well and truly said. apparently trifling song of "Lillibullero" was the chief cause of the downfall of James II. How much influence do you imagine the songs of our own country are exerting? Do you imagine that we should make a profitable bargain in case of a new war, by exchanging the song of "Yankee Doodle" for fifty thousand foreign soldiers led by a field marshal ? This is a kind of property you cannot trade away with profit. You cannot profitably part with your lofty thoughts and noble sentiments any more than we can profitably part with our own souls.- (From a speech delivered in 1855.) Pitt, William (England, 1759-1806.) Civilization for Africa-I trust we shall not think ourselves too liberal if, by abolishing the slave trade, we give them the same common chance of civilization with other parts of the world, and that we shall now allow to Africa the opportunity, the hope, the prospect of attaining to the same blessings which we ourselves, through the favorable dispensations of Divine Providence, have been permitted, at a much more early period, to enjoy. If we listen to the voice of reason and duty, and pursue this night the line of conduct which they prescribe, some of us may live to see a reverse of that picture from which we now turn our eyes with shame and regret. We may live to behold the natives of Africa engaged in the calm occupations of industry, in the pursuits of a just and legitimate commerce. We may behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon their land, which at some happy period in still later times may blaze with full lustre, and, joining their influence to that of pure religion, may illuminate and invigorate the most distant extremities of that immense continent. Then may we hope that even Africa, though last of all the quarters of the globe, shall enjoy at length, in the evening of her days, those blessings which have descended so plentifully upon us in a much earlier period of the world. Then, also, will Europe, participating in her improvement and prosperity, receive an ample recompense for the tardy kind Pitt, William- Continued ness (if kindness it can be called) of no longer hindering that continent from extricating herself out of the darkness which, in other more fortunate regions, has been so much more speedily dispelled : "Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis; Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper." Then, sir, may be applied to Africa those words, originally used, indeed, with a different view : His demum exactis Devenere locos lætos, et amana vireta It is in this view, sir,-it is an atonement for our long and cruel injustice toward Africa, that the measure proposed by my honorable friend most forcibly recommends itself to my mind. The great and happy change to be expected in the state of her inhabitants is, of all the various and important benefits of the abolition, in my estimation, incomparably the most extensive and important. (1792.) Against War for Conquest-Gentlemen have passed the highest eulogiums on the American war. Its justice has been defended in the most fervent manner. A noble lord, in the heat of his zeal, has called it a holy war. For my part, although the honorable gentleman who made this motion, and some other gentlemen, have been, more than once, in the course of the debate, severely reprehended for calling it a wicked and accursed war, I am persuaded, and would affirm, that it was a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war! It was conceived in injustice; it was nurtured and brought forth in folly; its footsteps were marked with blood, slaughter, persecution, and devastation;-in truth, everything which went to constitute moral depravity and human turpitude were to be found in it. It was pregnant with misery of every kind. Pliny, the Younger (Rome, 62-113 A. D.) Eloquence and Loquacity— Eloquence (eloquentia) is the talent of the few, but the faculty which Candidus calls loquacity (loquentia) is common to many and is generally an incident of imprudence. Plunkett, William Conyngham, Baron (Ireland, 1765-1854.) Conservative Objections to RepublicsWe have heard of "free and independent republics," and have since seen the most abject slavery that ever groaned under iron despotism growing out of them. Formerly, gentlemen of the jury, we have seen revolutions effected by some great call of the people, ripe for change and unfitted by their habits for ancient forms; but here from the obscurity of concealment and by the voice of that pygmy authority, self-created and fearing to show itself but in arms under cover of the night, we are called upon to surrender a constitution which has lasted for a period of one thousand years. Had any body of the people come forward stating any grievance, or announcing their demand for a change? No; but while the country is peaceful, enjoying the blessings of the constitution, growing rich and happy under it, a few desperate, obscure, contemptible adventurers in the trade of revolution form a scheme against the constituted authorities of the land, and by force and violence to overthrow an ancient and venerable constitution, and to plunge a whole people into the horrors of civil war! If the wisest head that ever lived had framed the wisest system of laws which human ingenuity could devise, if he were satisfied that the system were exactly fitted to the disposition of the people for whom he intended it, and that a great proportion of that people were anxious for its adoption, yet give me leave to say that under all these circumstances of fitness and disposition a well-judging mind and a humane heart would pause a while and stop upon the brink of his purpose, before he would hazard the peace of the country by resorting to force for the establishment of his system. But here, in the frenzy of distempered ambition, the author of the proclamation conceives a project of "a tree and independent republic, he at once flings it down, and he tells every man in the community, rich or poor, loyal or disloyal, he must adopt it at the peril of being considered an enemy to the country, and of suffering the pains and penalties attendant thereupon.( Prosecuting Robert Emmet, September 19th, 1803. ) Poe, Edgar Allan (American, 1809-1849.) The Beautiful in Speech-An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms and sounds and odors and sentiments amid which he exists; and just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms and sounds and colors and odors and sentiments a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights and sounds and odors and sentiments which greet him in common with all mankind,- he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations |